Alas, Poor Bob
by bsmadi
Summary: John comes home from a night out with the boys to find that the wall might not have ears but the skull has found his voice. Crossover with the Dresden Files. Rated T for language.


**Usual disclaimer... I own nothing or no one. I get no money. I have loads of fun, but I get no money.**

"Ow. Jesus. Fuck." The blond man let out a few more choice phrases as he made his way slowly up the stairs. He had made it almost to the top when the force of gravity became significantly stronger and he found he was forced to take those last three steps all over. Finally, he entered the flat by swinging the door open and shouting "Sherlock! I'm home!" loud enough for the married ones to suddenly look up from their tea and shout, "Sherlock! So are we!."

John giggled at the response and sort of lunged into the sitting room. No Sherlock. He stumbled into the kitchen. No Sherlock. He quietly peeked into the downstairs bedroom before falling through the door. No Sherlock. He stood up, well, as up as he could at that moment and trudged back into the sitting room, where he spun around, regretted spinning around, and still found no Sherlock.

"Huh," he said. "Sherlock must not be here." Never let it be said that John's sense of the obvious was ever hampered by drink. He sat in the squared-off chair because if Sherlock was not going to be here, then, sod it, he was going to sit in his chair. That lasted about thirty seconds before realized that Sherlock's chair was really, really uncomfortable.

John stood, intending to simply turn around and sit in his own chair when the Earth's rotation suddenly got faster and he ended up clutching the mantle above the fireplace. He came face-to-face, so to speak, with the skull, which he picked up, Hamlet style, and began to orate. "Ah, poor Yorick. He was a friend, Horatio. Well, I say friend."

"Bob."

John, who had been laughing so hard that tears were finding their way down his cheeks, suddenly became quiet and spun again (regretting again right away) look for the source of the voice. "Who, the hell... Sherlock, what the hell are you doing?"

"It's not Sherlock." There were lights in the skull's eyes. How in the hell had John missed that. There were fucking lights in the fucking skull. He furled his brow and looked closely, searching for the microphone that he was sure Mycroft must have put there in order to play this bizarre practical joke. "Hey, this is private in here."

John did the only thing he could do. He dropped the skull, ran into the kitchen, and started the kettle. Tea would fix this. Tea fixed crazy, he was pretty sure.

Tea was prepared. Biscuits were found. A nice plate on which to place biscuits was washed and dried. A jar of fingers was moved from the shelf and placed in the door of the refrigerator. After finding nothing left with which to stall, John picked up his cup and plate and went back into the sitting room. He set his dishes on the table next to his chair, looked at the skull on the floor and then made a show of reading the paper.

"Hey, pick me up, will you." The skull didn't actually make it a question. It was pretty much a demand, a demand John decided to ignore under the assumption that if you ignore a hallucination caused by just one too many it would simply disappear. He was wrong, of course. The skull stayed on the floor, the eyes flashed, yet again, and it seemed very insistent on talking. "Look," it said. "I realize that this is kind of weird."

"Weird? No. Not weird at all." John picked up the skull as ordered and put him... no, it... dammit, skulls are its, on the shelf. "I'm just a little completely drunk and you are my hallucination." He sat down, okay, plopped down, onto his chair. "I'm John. Glad to meet you, Bob."

"I'm glad to finally meet you, too," Bob said with a smile. Wait. Can skulls smile? Because John was pretty fucking sure he just saw Sherlock's skull smile. "You're flatmate-" and the skull was really good at putting air quotes around a word, even if he had no fingers, or hands, or really anything in the whole line of body parts, "refuses to hear me, and that gets really boring after a while."

John snorted. "That's Sherlock. Don't take it personally." John pulled the union jack pillow out from under his bottom, looked at it and grinned, because flagged shaped pillows are really funny sometimes, especially late at night when you're so drunk even the skulls seem witty. He tossed it onto Sherlock's chair, and then, after a second, retrieved it and put it behind his back. "He does that to everyone."

"No, he doesn't listen to everyone, I mean anyone, but he does hear them." There was a pause and John had time to wonder if he should have asked the skull if he'd like some tea, just to be polite, although whether or not it's polite to offer tea to someone with no stomach was probably questionable. "Harry at least could hear me."

John looked at the skull with new interest. An imaginary friend with a friend. Damned if his hallucinations didn't have depth. "Harry?" he asked. He frowned as an idea came to him. "You haven't been talking to my sister, have you. I mean I know she has problems, but she really doesn't need a skull trying to make conversation and scaring her half to death." He eyed the skull suspiciously. "I have a hammer and I know how to use it," he warned.

"Yeah, I'm real worried," Bob answered. "And no I've never met your sister, although I did try talking to that one girl you brought round. What was her name, Susan?"

John looked confused. "You mean Sarah?"

"Yeah, that's it! Nice looking girl. You should bring her around more."

"Yeah. Well, that's not likely." John stood up, swayed a bit and then headed to the kitchen. "I'm going to look for that bottle of whiskey that Harry sent. You just keep talking, yeah?"

"You know, John, I don't think that's a very good idea, another drink I mean." The skull, Bob, raised his voice so that he could be heard over the rustling, clinking, swearing and the occasional crash he heard from the kitchen, which is a pretty neat trick for someone without a larynx. "I think you've had enough, don't you?"

"Nope." John came out with a teacup full of amber liquid, sat in his chair and pointed took a drink. "And, frankly, I don't take advice from Sherlock's skulls."

"I'm not just a skull," the skull reasoned. "I am a spirit of intellect."

"Oh, God." John nearly choked on his drink. "That's just what I need. Another one of you around."

"No, you really don't do you?" The skull was quiet long enough for John to think that maybe the hallucinatory part of the evening was over before it spoke again. "You know, before Sherlock," it began. "I belonged to another detective, Harry Dresden, out of Chicago. He didn't always appreciate me, but he always heard me, at least when he was conscious. He was a wizard, see, and he needed someone like me to fill him in on the Nevernever. Mr. Consulting Detective, on the other hand, can't be bothered with things that couldn't possibly be possible. So, here I sit, gathering dust."

John held the drink up in mock salute. "Here's to you, mate," he said. "I know how it feels to be dumped."

"Technically, I wasn't dumped. I was lost."

"Lost?" John giggled at the thoughts swirling through his head. "So, what? Sherlock picked you up out of the lost and found bin and brought you home?"

"No!" Bob sounded horrified that he had been in any bin of any kind, ever. "Dresden lost me in a poker game. Your guy won. So here I am, a halloween mask of a sounding board to a man who doesn't even talk to me now that you're here."

"Yeah," John said sadly, although the sadness might have been at finding that his glass was now empty. "That really is too bad." He set the glass down. Standing, he stood to face Bob the skull, bowed slightly and said, "It was very nice to meet you, Bob. I hope we can chat again, sometime. I plan to go out with some friends, Saturday next. Keep it open, yeah?"

He was out the door and staring at the steps to his room trying to decide if the number had increased since the morning and if it was worth it to climb them or whether maybe it would be okay if he just lay there in the hall, when Bob called after him. "You could help me, John," he said. "You could send me back."

John stepped back into sitting room solely because he decided that the couch would be the safer choice of sleeping spots, and certainly not to write down the address of a wizard slash detective in Chicago, even if the skull did seem to miss him. Even if he did know what it was like to be dumped. Even if it somehow seemed the very right thing to do.

Weeks later, John was once again in his chair, once again pretending to read a newspaper, and once again ignoring a spirit of intellect. "John," the tall, dark-haired spirit was saying. "I just received the most peculiar letter."

"Oh?" John answered despite the fact that he knew his answer was unimportant. Sherlock would tell him about the letter even if he weren't actually there to listen.

"It's from Harry Dresden in Chicago."

John's eyes widened. Luckily, his paper was still up and hiding his face. "Who's that, then?"

"I've told you about Dresden, I'm sure." Sherlock sat down in his chair, which oddly, he seemed to find perfectly comfortable. "A Chicago detective who styles himself as a wizard."

John put down his paper and put on his look of innocence. "Nope. Don't think you have."

Sherlock leaned over, put his elbows on his knees and tented his fingers under his chin. "John," he asked. "Mrs. Hudson didn't hide my skull this time, did she?"

John concentrated on folding his newspaper.

"John?"

"Okay. Fine. I sent Dresden back his skull. Happy?"

Sherlock sat back and thought for a moment. "You said, I hadn't mentioned Dresden."

He watched John as he put the paper on the table, stood and took a deep breath. "Yes, I did. Well, I really have to leave for work. See you tonight, then, Sherlock."

"How did you know where to send the skull, John?"

John stopped at the door and hung his head. He had been so close to getting away. He lifted his head as a grin slowly spread across his face. He walked out the door, and shouted back, "Bob told me."


End file.
